Big jump in landslide toll not yet announced

Saturday

Mar 29, 2014 at 12:01 AMMar 29, 2014 at 9:12 AM

ARLINGTON, Wash. - The mountainside community of Oso waited in anguish yesterday to learn the full scope of Washington state's mudslide as authorities worked to identify remains and warned that they are unlikely to find anyone alive nearly a week after the disaster.

ARLINGTON, Wash. — The mountainside community of Oso waited in anguish yesterday to learn the full scope of Washington state’s mudslide as authorities worked to identify remains and warned that they are unlikely to find anyone alive nearly a week after the disaster.

Leslie Zylstra said everybody in Oso knows someone who died, and the village was coming to grips with the fact that many of the missing will never turn up.

“The people know there’s no way anybody could have survived,” said Zylstra, who used to work in an Arlington hardware store. “They just want to have their loved ones, to bury their loved ones."

Authorities delayed an announcement that they said will substantially raise the death toll to allow the Snohomish County medical examiner’s office to continue with identification efforts.

Tons of earth and ambulance-sized boulders of clay smashed everything in their path last Saturday, leaving unrecognizable remnants in their wake.

In addition to bearing the stress of the disaster, townspeople increasingly are frustrated by the lack of information from authorities, said Mary Schoenfeldt, a disaster traumatologist who has been providing counseling services at schools and for public employees and volunteers.

“The anger and frustration is starting to rise,” she said.

That’s normal for this phase of a disaster, as is the physical toll taken by not having eaten or slept normally in days, she said.

There also were signs of resilience. Handmade signs have appeared that say “Oso strong” and “530 pride” in reference to the stricken community and

Rt. 530 that runs through it.

Authorities have acknowledged the deaths of at least 25 people — with 17 bodies recovered. Reports of more bodies being found have trickled in from relatives and workers on the scene.

Searchers are working from a list of 90 missing people, which equates to about half the population of Oso, a North Cascades foothills community about 55 miles northeast of Seattle.

That list has not been made public, but officials have said it includes not just residents who might have been in their homes but others thought to have been in the area or traveling on the highway when the slide struck.

Authorities have all but eliminated the possibility that some people on the list might have been out of the area and have not checked in. And they warned that the chances of finding anyone alive amid the tons of silt and mud are slim.

“I would say there’s always some hope, but ... ,” Tom Miner said on Thursday, his voice trailing off before he finished his thought. He is an urban search-and-rescue leader for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Besides the 90 missing,

authorities are checking on 35 other people who might have been in the area at the time of the slide.

Rescuers, military personnel, volunteers and search dogs pressed on yesterday, driven by the hope of finding at least one survivor. But the operation had changed, said Snohomish County fire battalion commander Steve Mason. “It started with hasty searching,” he said. Now, “we want to be more methodical.”

A new crew of volunteer diggers showed up yesterday in a school bus from the nearby town of Arlington and marched single file toward the debris pile.

“There are people down here digging for their loved ones,” Mason said.